Bernie W. writes in to say: Jim -- Can you please help me win a bet at work? A co-worker of mine says that WALL-E makes a brief cameo appearance in " Ratatouille ." More importantly, this guy has bet me $100 that I'll never ever be able to find that robot in this movie. Copyright 2007 Disney...

There's this genuinely eerie passage in Karen Paik 's " To Infinity and Beyond! The Story of Pixar Animation Studios " ( Chronicle Books , November 2007), which talks about how a single book basically changed the course of John Lasseter 's life. In ninth grade, Lasseter was searching the art section...